Dust and Psionics
by Malcho1234
Summary: [DISCONTINUED. Look for Vigilant for the rewrite.] Tossed in a new world... One full of strange enemies and even stranger humans... And yet, there is one thing that remains the same: Humanity is in danger. And Christopher Redmond had sworn to protect Humanity... Rated T because of XCOM
1. Chapter 1

**Prologue: Raids and Rides**

**Proper Author's Note on the bottom. Here you'll just see the disclaimer:**

**I'm going to say this only once: I don't own either the XCOM franchise nor RWBY. If I did then things would've been different.**

**Now that this is over, enjoy this child of a talk with my sis, sudden inspiration and the resulting insomnia.**

* * *

The Sectoid scurried into the downed ship, away from the enemy that was shooting at its brethren. He was one of the few remaining crew members… The rest either died in the crash, were killed by the apes outside or had retreated to guard the Ethereal.

The alien could feel his leader's Psychic presence against his mind, urging him to fight the hairless apes… But the Sectoid was more afraid of them.

This… This wasn't supposed to happen… The Sectoid didn't know the leaders' plans, but it was clear that they failed… Not only had the natives progressed from the primitive ballistic weapons and useless armor to plasma rifles and Elerium-infused powered exoskeletons in two rotations of this planet around its sun, but they had also accessed the Gift…

Now only a handful of ships remained over the primitive planet, and none of them were the Temple Ship, their most powerful fortress and the seat of power of their highest leader… No, that ship was destroyed just a quarter of this planet's rotation around the sun ago…

The aliens were now in disarray… The remaining Ethereals were giving contradicting orders… Some wanted to return back to space, to continue their search of beings possessing the Gift… Some of them even did that, disappearing in the cosmos. Others wanted to destroy the hairless apes… They attacked their habitational centres, only for the ships to be brought down before teams of enemies boarded the craft and killed any enemy they found…

The Ethereal who commanded this Sectoid was of the latter group… And now the crew was paying the price…

The Sectoid paused. The sounds of combat outside had halted… A small part of him hoped that his kind had prevailed over the enemy… But he knew that it was just wishful thinking.

The alien hesitated. It could feel his Ethereal's displeasure… If it arrived to the Bridge like that then it might get shot just as an example… But… If it stayed here then he would definitely be found by the humans. It could always run… But how long would it survive out there?

The choice for the Sectoid was made before it could reach a decision on its own. The air in front of it shimmered… The alien lifted its arm-mounted Plasma Pistol, ready to fire on what he knew to be a cloaked enemy… Even though it was certain that it would not do any damage.

The distinct sound of a Plasma Rifle discharge could be heard before the alien could squeeze out a shot. Three globs of green plasma impacted the alien, the first two turning the top half of its torso into a charred mess. The third one hit the Sectoid right between the two big, bulbous eyes, searing skin, melting tissue and boiling away the water in its head…

* * *

"X-ray neutralized."

Damn but Chris loved saying that… The only thing better was the sight of a dead alien, especially if it was one that he killed… Like the one he just fragged that brought his kill-count to fifteen Sectoids.

"Good job, Kiddo." Came the Commander's voice through the comm. Christopher Redmond didn't know whether to grimace or smirk at the nickname he was given… Though he kind of deserved it, being only sixteen and thus XCOM's youngest soldier. "Continue deeper in the craft. Eliminate any foe you meet."

"Roger that." Chris replied as he activated the armor's stealth feature, shimmering out of view before he continued walking through the halls of the Abductor. The large craft had been downed somewhere in Siberia, and XCOM had dispatched their teams to capture it… Nothing unusual, even if this was the fourth craft they downed in the last month… Third, if you discounted the Temple ship…

The thought made Chris pause. The Temple Ship assault… A mission he couldn't participate in, as much as he wanted to… But he was still recovering from a nasty Plasma burn that a lucky Heavy Floater gave him.

But perhaps it was for the better… He did lose several of his closest friends… No, he shook his head. She sacrificed herself to save Earth. And he was going to make sure that the aliens paid tenfold for her death, as well as the death of every other human they killed.

"Next one's for you, Annette. And then one for Shaojie." Chris muttered as he advanced through the Abductor's Operations area. It was empty of all life… Even the Stasis Tanks were empty, something that the young boy was glad for.

Still, the lack of enemies here meant only one thing… The surviving crew was on the Command Deck, probably preparing for a last stand of sorts.

"Kiddo to Momma Bear, I'm approaching the Command Deck. No resistance encountered." This was Chris' job in the squad... Scout ahead, take out enemies if you can, leave them to the rest of the squad if you can't. That, and counter any Psionic enemies...

"I suspect the rest are holed up and waiting for us." He transmitted as he took a position opposite from the force field that acted as a door, Plasma Rifle at the ready.

"Roger that, Kiddo." Came the reply from the strike team's leader. "Stay on Overwatch and report any activity. Do not engage before we arrive."

"Acknowledged." Chris replied as he shifted to a more comfortable position.

The two minutes of waiting were uncomfortable... He couldn't see anything through the force field door, but he could clearly hear noises from behind it. If he was to guess then the aliens were preparing for an ambush... And then there was the prickling and unease in the back of his mind that he and the other human Psionics felt when an Ethereal was nearby...

The arrival of the rest of Strike Three had him glance back, enoug to acknowledge them. Momma Bear, the team's leader and Heavy Trooper, nodded at him.

"Sitrep?" She asked as the squad took positions for breaching.

"Lots of activity behind the door. Sounded like they were moving something heavy." He replied. "Also, I'm sensing an Ethereal."

The squad tensed at that... Fighting Sectoid Commanders was tough enough, with the risk of a team member having his mind and body controlled by the alien... But the Ethereals were a lot worse... It took the strongest of wills to resist their control, and even then they had more tricks in their arsenal...

"I guess it was too much to hope that the bastard had died in the crash..." Momma sighed before replacing the battery of her Heavy Plasma. "Think you can handle him, Kiddo?"

"I'll certainly try. Shielding you now." Chris warned the squad before concentrating. His eyes glowed purple, illuminating the inside of his helmet. He could feel the minds of the squad around him... From the calm presence of Rusty, their MEC trooper, to the bundle of nerves that was Needle, their Support. He then _pushed_, enveloping their minds like a protective blanket. A gentle nudge on Needle's psyche calmed her down somewhat, the Ghost Armor-clad girl nodding to him in thanks.

"Prepare for breach." Momma commanded and the squad readied themselves to storm the Command deck.

"Breach!" The former Russian SpezNaz barked. A push at the force field disrupted it and three grenades were immediately tossed in.

The defenders had started firing the moment the field was down, but quickly ducked under cover. This slightly negated the effect of the two Flashbangs and the Needle grenade. Still, a couple of Sectoids were unfortunate enough to be blinded for the rest of their short lives as their big eyes caught the full blast of the Flashbangs... Right before thousands of needles shredded their bodies.

The slight lull was all that Strike Three needed to storm onto the deck, raining Plasma bolts and Alloy spikes on the defenders.

Chris managed to get a good look at the aliens before he had to take cover behind a console. There were over a dozen of them left alive... Five Elite Mutons were at the back, standing behind heavy-looking crates, their armor protecting them as they poured green blobs of death from their Heavy Plasmas... The single Berserker was charging at the biggest targer, Rusty, who intercepted it with a well-aimed blast from his Particle Cannon, leaving only a gaping hole where the upper torso was.

Nine Sectoids were huddled behind whatever cover was possible, popping out to shoot from time to time. Their Plasma Pistols weren't that effective, especially since their aim was atrocious in their panic. Their numbers were quickly thinned as the XCOM soldiers turned their weapons on them and their cover.

And then there was the Ethereal... The robes-clad alien was hovering at the very back, his four hands hovering over...

Over an orb...

An orb that looked just like the one housed in the Golop chamber...

Chris immediately snapped a shot at the Ethereal. The bolt of plasma never reached it though... A couple of meters away from its target it swirled in the air.

"Shit!" Chris cursed as he jumped to the side just as the bolt of plasma shot back at him, partially melting his left shoulder pauldron.

The Ethereal didn't even acknowledge Chris' attempt at killing him as he continued doing... Well, whatever it was doing with the orb.

A roar signalled the death of one of the Mutons as it was blasted apart with concentrated plasma fire. The Sectoids were already barely recognizable bodies, with one literally splattered on the ceiling, victum of an unfortunate meeting with Rusty's KSM.

"Don't shoot the Ethereal!" Chris warned Strike Three. It wasn't going to do anything... The Telekinetic field wasn't going to fall easily, not without concentrated fire. And right now the Elites were a more pressing target...

Chris ignored the Ethereal for now and joined in shooting the Elite Mutons. A 'Whoomp!' signalled the death of the second one, courtecy of a headshot from Cyclops, the team's Sniper. One of the remaining three was missing chunks of its armor, as well as most of its left hand... Correction, most of its body, as a lucky shot hit a grenade clipped to its armor and cooked off the explosive.

That left two wounded Elites and the Ethereal against the six XCOM soldiers, who were more or less intact, if you excluded the damage to their armor.

Chris glanced towards the alien leader. Whatever it was doing was concerning... Nobody knew the true extend of the alien device's capabilities, and thus nobody knew what the Ethereal was doing...

"Kiddo!" Momma Bear's shout made Chris return his attention back to the fight. "Ghost and flank the suckers, we'll cover you!"

"Roger!" Chris replied and tapped the interface on the back of his wrist. The Ghost module in his armor activated and he shimmered out of view. A quick dash along the wall of the command deck brought him to a console, which allowed him a clean line of fire to the two Elites' sides.

"I'm in position." He reported, even though it was unnecessary. His team's HUD was probably highlighting him... Still, he was taught to report such things.

"Light 'em up then!" Momma Bear barked out. Chris was more than happy to comply...

Bringing his rifle up he took aim and switched to full auto before pulling the trigger. Glob after glob of plasma shot out of his rifle, disrupting his stealth field.

The green death hit one of the Elites in the side, blasting charred holes in the torso armor. It roared in pain, but that was all it managed to do before the squad redirected their fire to it. What fell on the ground could barely be called a corpse...

The final Elite Muton roared and charged from its cover, seemingly intent on taking one of the humans with it. Its target was the squad's second Assault, who rose to the challenge.

"Eat lead, fucker!" Hammer roared as he pumped spike after spike from his Alloy Cannon into the Muton. Three of them hit, piercing through the armor before the human had to jump to the side to avoid collision.

The alien smashed through a console before falling down... And staying on the floor. Not ones to take any chances, the humans made sure that it was dead.

After Rusty stomped on the Elite's head the team turned their attention to the last alien in the room. The Ethereal gave no sign of noticing them... It was absorbed in its work with the sphere.

The team opened fire on the alien, firing a salvo before moving away as their fire was returned by the swirling maelstrom of Psionic energy.

"Goddamn it... Kiddo, try and melt his brain!" Momma barked out.

"On it!" Chris replied and concentrated. His eyes glowed purple, the telltale aura of a Psionic enveloping his head as he pushed his mind at the alien.

That got the Ethereal's attention... The alien turned around, his helmeted head looking at Chris. The teenager could feel the alien's mind resisting the Mindfray as they locked eyes in a silent battle of wills that illuminated the area around them with Psionic purple...

Now, if this was a fair fight, one on one, then Chris would have no chance at winning. He had neither the power nor the experience of the Ethereal when it came to using Psionics.

Luckilly, XCOM rarely fought fair... As soon as the alien focused on Chris the rest of the squad opened fire. The Telekinetic field protected it, but it also added pressure on the Ethereal's mind.

The alien hissed, a sound that sounded disturbing through the helmet before it pointed its upper-right arm at the shooters. A lance of Psionic energy scattered the squad. But it wasn't finished...

Needle's body suddenly jerked and she pointed her Plasma Rifle at Chris' head. Thankfully Hammer managed to tackle the Support, cursing up a storm as he tried to wrestle the rifle out of her hands. The Mind Control had successfully taken two combatants out...

Chris let out a growl as he realized that he had forgotten to maintain the Psi Inspiration... This Ethereal was smarter than the others... It could multitask, it had made sure that it couldn't be flanked thanks to its position, and the field in front of him returned their fire... If this continued then Strike Three was going to lose members...

And so Chris did something stupid.

Enveloping himself in his Psionics the teenager charged through the Telekinetic field and tackled the Ethereal. The reckless move surprised the alien and it released the Mind Control as it tried to repel the enraged human who rained blows at its frail body.

The Ethereal garbled something in whatever passed for a language among its kind and reached out towards the orb. A ribbon of purple energy shot out, connecting it with the device. The Psionic energy created visible waves in the air...

"Oh no you don't!" Chris shouted grabbed the alien's hand, his Psionic energies mixing with the Ethereal's. The alien screamed, an incoherent, distorted sound that probably cursed the human...

"Fuck you too!" Chris screamed, rearing his head back before headbutting the alien.

The sphere exploded... The world seemed to do the same for Strike Three as a wave of Psionic energies smashed into them...

Once the noise, light and sensations receded the humans stood up, dizzy as if suffering from the effects of a flashbang.

"Ugh... Status?" Momma Bear asked as she shook her head, trying to clear the cobwebs.

"Alive... And in my own mind..." Needle groaned as she stood up, using the wall for support.

"All systems operational..." Rusty said, the MEC trooper being least affected of the squad.

"Feels like the aftermath of my bachelor party..." Hammer groaned, not even bothering to try and move.

"It feels worse than that..." Cyclops replied, shaking his head.

There were a few moments of silence as they all expected Chris to speak up. When no reply came everybody dragged themselves to an upward position and moved to check on their Psionic...

Only to find him gone, along with the Ethereal and the alien device...

"Shit..." Hammer summed up Strike Three's thoughts with one single word...

* * *

Chris let out a groan... His head hurt, his body hurt... Even places he didn't knew existed hurt.

With another groan the teenager opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was his armor's HUD, a sight that made him sigh with relief. Then he looked around...

First thing he noticed was that he wasn't in the ship anymore. Second thing he noticed was the lack of any aliens... The third was that he was in a forest.

A green, lush forest. Nothing out of the ordinary... Only, the UFO he had fought on had crashed in Siberia, in the middle of winter...

And this place seemed to be in the middle of summer, if the lush vegetation was any indication. Not to mention that the trees weren't anything like those he had seen before boarding the UFO...

"Fuck..." Chris summed the situation as he sat up, ignoring the sense of vertigo. Did the sphere transfer him here? That seemed possible... But where was "here"? He had no way of guessing... Trees had been the last thing he wanted to learn about when Vahlen pressured him into studying...

Oh well, he was going to have the answer to that question soon. Reaching up he placed his fingers on the side of the helmet, activating his comm.

"This is Christopher Redmond to XCOM Command. Do you copy, over?" Static was the only answer he received... Another tap switched the channel to the emergency one. "Command, do you copy? Strike Three, are you there? Momma Bear?"

Static... Static... Static...

"Crap!" He cursed, bringing his fist down in frustration. Something crunched under his hand... Looking down Chris frowned at a piece of the alien orb.

"You again?" He growled as he picked it up. The strange thing felt smooth and polished, like a piece of glass... And as active as one, aS a burst of Psionic energy confirmed.

Chris let out a sigh. So much for going back that way... At least he could take it with him. Vahlen would be happy to examine it... She was kind of peeved that they only had one of these devices and they needed it intact.

And now it was time to assess the situation... He was MIA, stranded God-knows-where, with limited resources... After checking the armor's HUD for the outside conditions (22 degrees Celsius/72 degrees Fahrenheit) he undid the helmet's airtight seal and pulled it off. He enjoyed the taste of clean, unrecycled air for a few moments, brushing the sweat-matted brown hair from his forehead before continuing with the inventory.

Tapping the various compartments of his armor open he made a list of what he had.

Plasma Pistol. Full charge.

Plasma Rifle. Battery at around thirty percent. He quickly replaced it with one of the six spares he carried and marked it to know that it wasn't full.

One standard-issue XCOM combat knife, made of Alien alloys.

One emergency Medikit, full.

One packet of XCOM MRE, which was as nutricious as it was disgusting.

One litre of water in his armor's reservoir.

His phone, modified by "Gramps" Shen, making it as poweful as a top-of-the-line laptop. It contained a multitude of different handy programs, as well as the entirety of Chris' music collection.

One piece of the Alien device.

And finally his Ghost armor, only slightly damaged thanks to others drawing the aliens' fire.

All in all he was well-off. Weapons, armor, some medicine, an MRE that should last him for a few days and some music to listen to when he got bored.

And when you added his abilities... Well, he could take on anything on Earth, short of an alien strike force.

With that thought in mind Chris activated his emergency XCOM beacon and set on in search of civilization or signal... Whichever came first.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

**Hello dear readers and welcome to my second XCOM crossover. This time the action is in the RWBY universe. And once again we have my OC, Christopher Redmond, tossed in a situation that he doesn't want to be...**

**I know that many of you were hoping for another chapter of Enemy Monstrous. Don't worry, the next chapter is partially restored after the loss/theft of my old phone and the chapter I had written on it.**

**Now, a bit of story about this story... This little piece of fiction was born after a long RWBY-related discussion with my sis and a couple of friends. I just couldn't help but wonder how would XCOM Plasma weapons, Gene Mods and Psionics compare to Dust weapons, Aura and Semblance. The writing of this chapter continued well into the night, right until I realized I was going to be late for work... Not that it stopped me from writing on the bus or during breaks.**

**Well, I guess I bored you enough. Stay tuned for the next chapter, where Chris will have his first meeting with the natives of Remnant.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Thank you for the views, reviews and follows/favorites. And now, as usual, here are replies to some reviews.**

**Presbydos: and that's why I use a Nokia.**

**some guy: I won't. And in case I do, be my guest. I'll set up the welcome feast.**

**Guest: I'd put Dust rounds more in term of XCOM Laser weaponry when it comes to damage. Stronger than balistic, weaker than plasma.**

**thefluffyone93: Yeah... I have that problem...**

**Granet: Thank you. Chris will be described more extensively in the next chapters. Though, if you follow my other XCOM crossover then you can find it there. It's the same guy, only a different situation.**

**Yinko: You'll see when Chris encounters one.**

**necrofantasia: Read and you'll see. Or check my other XCOM story.**

**LoneWolf218: Acknowledged.**

**And now on with the story.**

* * *

**Chapter One: First First Contact**

If Chris had any doubts about being in a different time zone before they were all dispelled when the mission clock on his HUD, set to Local Time for the part of Siberia where the UFO had crashed, was showing 17:39 when it started to get dark. There was just no way the sun could set that early in the middle of summer. Which meant that he was sent a few time zones forward. Two or three, at the minimum. Which would put him somewhere in Asia's temperate regions, if the trees were any indication. However, he couldn't remember any forests like this one from what little he knew about Geography. And it didn't explain the lack of XCOM coverage either, since there were at least four Stealth satellites in geosynchronous orbit above the continent.

Taking a sip of water from the tube in his armor Chris pondered the options he had. He could continue in the dark, using the low-light settings of his helmet's HUD... But it was inadvisable, since there was a good chance of missing something vital in the dark, especially since he was growing tired.

Second option was to light a fire and camp on the ground. While the fire would keep predators away while he took some well-deserved rest, it could also attract attention of the wrong type.

Which left him with the third option. Taking aim at a thick tree he fired the grappling hook. The barbed arrow-like projectile shot from the device that encompassed his left forearm, embedding in the trunk and instantly securing itself.

A tug and he was walking up the tree, the cable coiling back in the launcher. Soon he reached his target - a nice, thick branch, sturdy enough to hold his weight. From there it was an easy task to use the grappling hook's reserve cable to secure his body and equipment to the trunk and make himself as comfortable as possible.

It didn't take long for exhaustion to lull him to sleep.

And high above the trees' thick foliage the broken moon of Remnant shone...

* * *

It was already light out when Chris woke up. After the brief disorientation that came from waking up in an unfamiliar place he let out a groan. Sleeping in armor wasn't the most comfortable thing while on a flat surface, and the branch he was on was nowhere near that.

A glance at the clock of his HUD showed that it was 08:42. Chris mentally added three hours to that. 11:42 seemed more plausible, considering the time of last night's dusk.  
But the current time didn't matter... He had been asleep for nearly fourteen hours... That was six hours more than what he usually got, and definitely more than he could afford with his limited supplies.

And speaking of supplies, he was feeling peckish... Straddling the thick branch he removed his helmet and hung it on a protruding piece of bark. Tapping one of the compartments of his armor open he pulled the MRE out and opened it. For a moment he hesitated. The brown block looked so unappetizing... But he was hungry... Finally Chris relented and broke a piece of the "food" and popped it in his mouth.

"Ugh..." He voiced his displeasure at the taste. Somehow someone had gathered the taste of cardboard and the inside of his shoes and put it in a block that felt like dry mud inside his mouth...

A mouthful of water from the small reservoir in his armor managed to make the mass slightly easier to swallow, though it still took a couple of tries. A few more sips from the water managed to wash the taste from his mouth.

With another grunt of disgust Chris put the rest of the block away. It would keep him sated for a while, and the taste made sure that he wouldn't want to eat more of it soon.  
Putting his helmet back on Chris recovered the gear he hung and hopped off the branch. The Gene-mods and his armor made sure that he didn't break any bones when he hit the ground and rolled.

Normally the first order of business for the day would be a nice workout. Unfortunately Chris couldn't afford to have one right now...

After dusting his Ghost armor off he continued walking in the same direction as before...

* * *

Five hours... For five hours Chris had been walking in a more or less straight line, using the strength given to him by the denser muscles he was augmented with and the grappling hook of his Ghost armor to get through obstacles.

"Fucking forest's denser than a jungle..." He grumbled to himself. It was easier to count the time he could see the sky! Like now, as he was looking at the azure expanse above him. Only a couple of white clouds marred the otherwise breathtaking sight... For centuries mankind had wondered what lay beyond... And now Chris knew the answer. Danger... From the expanse of space, with its dangers, to the inhabitants... There were at least five (somewhat) intelligent species out there... Species that wanted his kind dead or enslaved, he didn't know which. What he knew was that the Ethereals and their thralls were the enemy. An enemy that he was more than glad to meet on the battlefield... No, not just him. Every soldier of XCOM was like that, ready to kill every last alien and their supporters to ensure Humanity's survival...  
Chris' thoughts were interrupted as something lunged at him from the bushes. The human barely had the time to register the black and white blur before it crashed in him, sending him skidding on the ground.

The next thing that he saw was a skull-like mask that was snapping at him with teeth that looked too sharp to belong to such a beast. Chris tried to push it off as its claws scraped against his armor, but he couldn't ger a leverage, nor could he get his rifle in a position to fire.

Finally he managed to get his legs between him and the beast and kicked hard. His leg muscles, which allowed him to jump ten meters high, sent the animal flying to the other side of the small clearing, where it landed in a crouch. The human wasted no time and tapped the interface on the back of his wrist.

You could almost see the surprise on the creature's bone faceplate as its prey vanished in thin air. It raised its head, sniffing the air as it tried to locate the human.  
In the meantime, Chris had gotten up from his position and moved to a spot about a dozen meters away to catch his breath. The lull allowed him to examine the... thing.  
Powerful-looking hind legs, perfect for leaping or running. Hand-like paws on the front legs, ending with sharp claws. Black fur covering the muscled torso, with boney spikes along its back and arms. And a skull-like mask with red markings covering the wolf-like head...

Chris either had some serious gaps in his knowledge of animals, or he was just attacked by a werewolf on steroids... But that was impossible, right? Werewolves existed only in fiction.

Then again, just yesterday he was trading plasma shots with aliens. And three years ago those were considered fictional as well.

Whatever the creature was, Chris was sure that it was some rare specimen. That, or a new alien type, even if it looked nothing like the other x-rays he had seen. It would probably be valuable captured alive and brought to Vahlen for interrogation and vivisection...

The XCOM trooper moved behind the beast and calmly raised his Plasma rifle. Vahlen could get her specimen some other time. Right now he was more concerned with surviving, and the chances of that will increase with the creature's death. Especially before it could report his presence to whatever commanded it.

Taking aim at the back of its head he pulled the trigger. The green glob of plasma hit just below the bone mask and most of the creature's head was vaporized.  
"Critical hit." Chris smirked behind the helmet as he lowered the rifle and walked to the beast's corpse as it started smoking. He noted that for later as he crouched down to examine it in peace.

A snap of a twig behind him had the soldier pivot around and squeeze a trio of shots from his rifle. The first one missed, but the second and third hit the torso of another werewolf, which fell to the ground, dead.

"Of course..." He whispered to himself. Aliens always came in groups... Though the usual number was three. So where was the last one...

A rustling to his right answered that question. Aiming his rifle at the bushes he waited to get a clear shot...

It wasn't just one werewolf that walked into the clearing though. It wasn't two, three or even four... The numbers were in the two digits... And he could see more of them lurking outside the clearing.

This was bad... Chris was surrounded from all sides by enemies that, while dying as easy as a Sectoid or a Thin Man, had the strength of numbers to overwhelm him.  
He wasn't equipped for a battle like this... His Ghost armor's plates didn't protect everything... It only covered his chest, crotch and most of the outside of his arms and legs. The rest was a "muscle" suit that retained mobility while still offering protection from heat-based damage, like plasma and laser fire.

Still... Ghosting out (a term that in XCOM slang meant "become invisible and get the hell out of there!") was impossible. The creatures were too many to sneak out undetected.

Using the grappling hook might be an option... If there was a sturdy enough tree nearby. And Chris couldn't see any in the immediate vicinity, not that he had time to look... The snarling werewolves seemed quite tense, as if they only waited for the slightest prompt to attack...

For a few seconds everything was still... The narrow orange visor of Chris' helmet was glaring at the werewolves, who returned the favor with their red eyes.  
"Alright, you beasts. Let's do this!" Chris growled and pulled the trigger. The first two werewolves were downed before the others could realize what was happening. A third one had its head removed as it snarled. The rest, however, charged forward on all fours. Chris managed to squeeze another two shots , downing one more werewolf before they were upon him.

The world seemed to slow down as his Hyper-Reactive Pupils tracked the first beast's swipe. Ducking under the attack Chris pivoted on his left foot, sweeping the legs from under the beast.

He didn't have the chance to finish it as another of its kind jumped from behind, slamming shoulder-first in the human. Chris didn't waste time as he turned a trip over the first opponent's body in a roll before he turned around and shot the rugby wannabe before sending a blob of plasma in the first one's chest.

That made six werewolves down, or eight, if you counted the two from before. Only a couple of dozen left...

Chris didn't even have time to curse before he had to leap up. A moment later two werewolves collided in the spot he occupied. To add injury to the insult the human landed on top of them and used their heads as springboard to launch himself away. Both beasts fell, one of them with its neck bent at an unnatural angle.

Chris' flight was cut short as another werewolf leaped up and tackled him out of the air. The two ended in a ball on the ground, rolling a couple of times before coming to a stop. The human was pinned this time, with only his left hand free...

This time Chris was the one to strike first. Balling his hand in a fist he punched the beast in the face until it reeled back, allowing him to free his right hand. Tapping the interface on his wrist he sent the grappling hook shooting straight in the werewolf's eye.

The projectile was made to pierce and secure itself in concrete. Thus the fact that it burst through the back of the beast's head didn't surprise Chris in the slightest. Unfortunately there was no time to try and pull the cable and hook from the creature's skull, which meant that he had to detach it.

Now one of his escape options was eliminated until he could replace the cable. And that was a bit impossible at the moment.

Pushing the dead monster off him Chris grabbed his rifle from where it fell and stood up. The beasts were circling around him, their posture wary... They knew he was dangerous. And that he could kill them from a distance.

Good.

Maybe now he could leave... Perhaps the beasts would decide that he wasn't worth the trouble and let him go? Tapping the armor's interface he activated the Ghost mode and shimmered out of view...

Just as a werewolf slammed at him from behind. A sharp pang of pain in his side and a blazing red warning on his HUD informed him of his muscle suit being breached.  
Chris held his side as he jumped to the side. The beasts howled as they smelled his blood. The red drops became visible as they left the Ghost field, staining the ground under him.

"Shit..." He hissed as he pressed his hand on the wound. He couldn't see it, but the pain and blood loss made it clear that it was serious... He would have to patch it up.  
But first Chris had to get away from the werewolves...

Clamping the Plasma rifle on his back he pulled out his sidearm. He could shoot it with one hand, using the other to try and keep as much blood inside his body as possible.

"Close your mind to stress and pain..." He whispered through clenched teeth and dashed forward. He'd have time to hurt later. He plowed through the bushes before sliding on his knees as a werewolf swiped at his stealthed form. He didn't open fire though... Cancelling his invisibility was the most stupid thing he could do, even if it was already compromised by the wound.

As blind luck would have it, this was the only werewolf that Chris encountered for the next few minutes. Still, he could hear the pack's howls right behind him as they chased him through the underbrush...

* * *

Three hours... For three hours he ran, the pack of werewolves hot on his heels. Four times they managed to catch up with him, raising his kill count to thirty-four. But he didn't come out of the fight clean either, as two of those times they got lucky... He even had to use his Psionics, resulting in a nasty headache as he kept a field of Psi Panic up for half an hour...

Finally he managed to loose them by using an ages-old trick - he walked a few hundred meters in a stream, the water washing the scent of his blood away.  
Dusk was already setting in when he checked the HUD'S chronometer. 18:24, or 20:24, as he presumed.

The teenager had found a cliff that wasn't easily accessed from the ground... Not without a combination of Grappling hook (the cable being replaced just a few minutes ago) and a nearly-agonizing use of his denser musculature to climb the cliff's side.

Now that he was safe from the damn werewolves he could address his wounds. Two more gashes were torn in his suit when the pack caught up with him. One had torn the front, as his abdomen. It was a small miracle that it had only gotten his skin and not eviscerated him on the spot. The second one, on his right arm, was worse... He could barely move it now.

And on top of the pain (which he desperately tried to ignore) there was the blood loss...

Chris' grimace at the sight of the wounds as he peeled the suit off them was completely justified. The wounds were messy and bleeding much more than it was healthy.  
He managed to clean the wounds somewhat with the last bit of water from his armor's reservoir. Hopefully they won't get infected... It would be plain insulting if he died from an infection after surviving all the alien and human encounters in the past year and so...

Pulling the XCOM Medikit from its compartment he selected the general antibiotic/wound sealing gel. Hopefully it wound counteract anything that was on those things' claws... Steeling himself he plunged the nozzle in the wound on his abdomen and pulled the trigger. A growl of pain escaped his gritted teeth as the solution filled the wound, sealing it.

He repeated the process two more times, each of them as unpleasant as the first. Pulling the nozzle from the gash on his arm he breathed deeply a few times as the stinging sensation receded.

With the wounds tended to he allowed himself to lie on his back and rest for a couple of minutes.

The night sky was so beautiful... Even if he couldn't recognize the constellations above him. And the large moon was shining bright as it rose above the trees, its shattered side facing...

Chris shot up before falling back down in pain. Blinking the tears that gathered in his eyes away he stared at the moon. What... What happened? It wasn't like that before... This wasn't possible, right? What could possibly do that much damage, and do it in a single day?

Unless...

Forcing his panic down Chris tried to think rationally and try to find a possible explanation. The Moon was whole last time he saw it. This one wasn't. The damage done to it didn't look recent as well.

The way he saw it there were two possibilities:

The first one was that the Alien device had sent him to the future... A future where the Moon had been hit, either by a weapon or an asteroid... One where white-masked black werewolves stalked the woods...

Chris didn't like this possibility. It meant that something had gone wrong... He was sure that XCOM would have prevented anything like that from happening. The Moon above him would mean that they had failed...

The second option was that he was on a different planet. A slightly better possibility for Earth, but just as bad for himself, if not even worse.

If this was Earth then there was a good chance of him finding civilization if he continued searching. If this was another planet... There might not be any civilization at all...  
Either way he'd have to survive. And that meant resting for now... First he needed to put something in his stomach. Thankfully he still had most of his MRE. It still tasted bad and was as swallowable as ever.

Swallowing the last part of the bite Chris leaned back, intent on getting some sleep. For a few minutes he looked at the moon.  
A dark shape passed in front of it just as he was about to doze off, followed by a second one. Rising up Chris put his helmet on and sought the night sky for whatever that was. Everything could be a threat in his situation...

Locating the two dark shapes wasn't that hard. Tapping the side of his helmet he zoomed in. They looked like bats... Like black bats... With the same kind of bone mask as the werewolves...

The body looked quite humanoid. The hands appeared to be human-like, unlike a bat. Where a bat's wings were a membrane stretching between its "fingers", this one had the skin stretching between it and its body. Another membrane connected the legs, acting as a tail.

The overall look was kind of like those winged suits that Chris had seen on TVs.

The human focused his attention on the creature's head. The bone mask was white, like the werewolves', with the same red markings. Only, there were no eyeholes. The bone curved on top, making a pair of oversized bat-like ears. A pair of fangs could also be seen jutting down from the bone, going past its chin.

Of course... There were werewolves. Why not have Dracula's spawn as well?

The two batmen, as Chris called them in his mind, pulled their wings to their bodies and swooped down at him with a screech. If he were to guess they used echolocation, just like real bats... And they had found him.

The human stood up and lifted his Plasma pistol. The batmen were inside his range, but still far enough to dodge the shots... He was going to wait for them to get closer.

"Come on... Come on..." Chris whispered as he tried to steady the pistol with his injured hand. Shooting with the non-dominant hand was tricky...

"Just a bit... Closer... Gotcha!" He pulled the trigger once, twice, three times. Three globs of plasma shot out at the first batman. The creature spread its wings, trying to evade the shots. Two of them went wide, but the third one hit it in the shoulder. The beast let out a horrible screech as it plummeled down like a rock, what remained of its wing flapping behind it like a grotesque cape.

The second one wasn't deterred by the death of its comrade. It continued forward before spreading its wings with a thunder-like clap as they caught the air. Chris aimed the pistol at the creature, but before he could pull the trigger it let out a shriek. Even with the helmet dampening the sound it still hurt his ears.

Looking up the human's eyes widened before he ducked down, ignoring the pain in his abdomen. The bat beast flew over him, its claws scraping over his armor.  
A clatter signaled that it had gotten his rifle from the magnetic clamp on his back. Turning around Chris clamped the Plasma pistol to his hip and darted after the weapon as it tumbled toward the edge. Just as it was about to fall down he jumped after it, his fingers barely catching the top rail before it fell over.

Another horrible screech heralded the beast's next pass. Chris immediately turned on his back, his thumb flicking the rifle's safety off. His finger pulled the trigger three times.

The rifle shot out one glob of plasma before it let out a hiss and a whiff of green smoke. Chris' eyes widened at the telltale sign of an empty energy clip.

At least the plasma round hit the bat-man in the chest, burning a large hole straight to its heart. The corpse, however, retained its forward momentum which had it slam straight into Chris, sending both tumbling over the edge. The human twisted in the air, putting the bat-man's body between him and the ground before the impact.

The Plasma rifle fell a few meters away from Chris as he lay on top of the corpse, groaning in pain. At least it didn't fall on him... That would've been embarrassing, not to mention painful.

For a few moments Chris just laid there, preferring to just rest while he could...

And then a werewolf stalked in the clearing.

"Oh fuck me..." Chris groaned as he pulled his sidearm and snapped a pair of shots at the beast, bringing his kill-count to thirty-five.

Several growls came from behind the bushes surrounding the clearing. Chris grit his teeth and pushed himself off the bat-man's corpse. It was time to run again... Standing up the human tapped the interface, activating his armor's invisibility...

The crackling of electricity and acrid small from his back wasn't what he was expecting... Peeking over his shoulder he saw a long gash going straight through the Ghost module. The bat must've gotten the device on its fly-by...

"Fuck me sideways!" Chris swore. That was his biggest advantage against the werewolves...

Scooping up his rifle he clamped it on his back and ran towards the edge of the clearing.

He wasn't going to sit around and let the werewolves get him...

* * *

Headmaster Ozpin leaned back in his chair. Everything was so quiet... Beacon Academy was almost empty, with just a few members of the staff staying behind. The others were getting some well-deserved rest before the school year's start in two months.

Reaching out he tapped the interface on his desk. A screen popped up, showing a small clearing, devoid of anything of note.

It was a view from one of the cameras hidden in the Emerald Forest. Ozpin checked the footage daily in order to monitor the Grimm's movement.

He switched the view to other cameras until he found something interesting. Three Beowolf corpses littered a clearing, with a rather large amount of blood around their smoking corpses. Narrowing his eyes the Headmaster flipped through the cameras until he reached another, similar view. Only this one contained an Ursa Major as well...

"Hmm... Perhaps they fought for territory..." Ozpin mused and lifted his mug up. Taking a sip from the coffee he switched to another camera...  
And then he did a textbook spittake at the scene shown in the feed.

A human, dressed in strange armor, was choking a Beowolf with one hand while firing some kind of Dust weapon at the rest of the pack. Quickly zooming in on the fighter Ozpin took a better look. He was covered in blood, and if the gashes that were visible were any indication then a good part of the red fluid was his own...

Pulling his Scroll out Ozpin opened it and called one of the numbers he had on speed dial.

"Yes?" The face of Glynda Goodwitch, one of his closest friends and a teacher at Beacon appeared on the screen.

"Glynda, are you still at the Academy?" Ozpin asked, his eyes flicking towards the screen with the video feed. The Huntsman had let the Beowolf he was choking fall and just dashed out of the camera's view.

"Yes, but I was just about..."

"Good. Meet me at the gates to the Emerald Forest." Ozpin commanded as he switched through the cameras' views, trying to locate the human.

"What? But..." Glynda started to protest, only to be interrupted by Ozpin for the second time:

"No time to explain now." With that Ozpin ended the call before calling up the cameras' feed and a map of their locations. After pausing just to grab his mug the headmaster dashed out of his office.

A couple of minutes later he arrived at the gates leading to the forest. Glynca was already waiting for him, riding crop tapping her hand impatiently.

"What's going on, Ozpin?" She asked him with narrowed eyes. She had important business to do today...

"There's a wounded Huntsman in the forest." Ozpin said as he held up his Scroll for her to see the running human. "If we move fast we can intercept him here." He continued, pointing at a spot on the map.

"Let's go." Glynda nodded before the two sped off in the forest...

* * *

"Fifty-seven!" Chris roared as he stabbed his knife in the side of a werewolf's neck before pulling it out and kicking the bleeding beast away. Ducking under another's swipe he pointed his pistol up and promptly shot it in the head. "Fifty-eight!"

The XCOM soldier had lost track of the time he had spent fighting the beasts... It felt like weeks. And he could also feel that he was on his last legs... Right now he probably had more adrenaline and drugs in his veins than blood.

His eyes flashed purple behind the helmet's visor and a werewolf doubled over in pain, clutching at its head. This gave Chris a chance to deliver another fatal blow to the neck before he moved onto the next one.

Unfortunately, the next one moved onto him first. The beast's claws scratched at his armor, the power behind the swipe sending him flying right into a tree.

Falling in its base he brought his gun up and squeezed a pair of shots at the assailant.

"Sixty..." He wheezed as the werewolf dropped. Unfortunately there were half a dozen more ready to take its place...

"Fuck you..." Chris groaned and tried to stand up. His body, however, didn't respond... He simply lacked the energy to do so. He could barely lift his pistol anymore...

Seeing this the beasts charged at him, leaping the air. Chris desperately tried to do something... Anything... Roll to the side, bring his pistol up and shoot, slash with the knife... But nothing happened.

And then, just as it seemed that this was going to be the end for Christopher Redmond, a purple barrier appeared between him and the werewolves. The beasts bounced off it as a blonde-haired woman dropped in front of him.

The last thing that Chris saw was the woman waving a black object, shooting streams of purple at the beasts before a silver-haired man dressed in green jumped in the fray.

Then he promptly lost consciousness...

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

**And that's a wrap. Chris has had his first taste of Remnant and it's local fauna, and he's definitely disliking it.**

**The Draculean (Bat-man) is my own fan-made Grimm. It was inspired by Dracula's bat form in the Van Helsing movie. After all, there are werewolves here, why not vampires? If anyone wants to use it then just message me for permission.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Ugh... Three birthdays, with barely any time for the hangover to disappear between them... I barely had the time to write!**

**Again, thank you for reading, following and reviewing. As usual, here are my answers to your feedback:**

**Presbydos: The cliffhanger felt right for this situation. Otherwise, I would have had to merge the two chapters.**

**Chris may count as a war veteran, but his experience is completely different than a Huntsman's. The things he knows might be good against aliens, but they don't work that well against the Grimm. Just take a look at the previous chapter - he killed sixty Beowolves and almost got killed in turn, while Ruby can kill around that many without getting a scratch.**

**Besides, he needs some sort of education. And he can't just stand around and have others kill the monsters while he's safely staying in some high-school, right? Especially not after doing more or less the same thing for around an year.**

**As for a screenshot pic, I'll see when I can get my hands on a computer with the game. And when I can get a male Assault... The last time I played I got exclusively females...**

**thefluffyone93: I'm trying, man. I'm trying.**

**Golden Sheath: Hmm... That might be a good idea for a Trailer for him... I might just do it.**

**Mr Beaver Buttington: And here I was hoping that nobody would bitch about the pairing. Alright, let me ask this: who would you pair Chris with?**

**Guest: The biggest shockers in his live have already passed. I don't think that anything beats an alien attack and getting yourself transported to another world/time... Seeing humans is a relief, not a shock.**

**Discovering how different the humans are... Eh, still not as much of a shock, I think. They are humans, after all.**

**necrofantasia: The way I see it, Psionics have the drawback of putting a strain on the user's mind, as well as give them a headache. Can you imagine fighting a horde of Beowolves when your head is pounding? Because I can't. For Rift, it's only used by the Volunteer, who got it after accessing the Ethereals' Psionic Network. I'd say that they plucked the knowledge from one of the aliens' mind. And no human uses Psi Lance.**

**But, he will use Psionics more in the future, after his Aura is unlocked. It'll heal the headaches and ease the strain. I'll be adding more powers as well. You'll see which.**

**Kebab Removal Unit: Thank you, and don't worry. The ships will play a role, but they won't be the main focus of the story. Though there will be a few chapters dedicated solely to them.**

**drake202: Chris is an Assault. He might have had a grenade, but he used it. The Medikit is having multiple uses because it makes more sense and is more realistic that way. As for what he could learn... There's an entire new world out there.**

**Now, the previous chapter's title referred to Chris' First Contact with the Grimm. This one refers to him meeting the native humans. Though technically it's his third First Contact, if you count the aliens...**

**And now on to the story:**

* * *

**Chapter Two: Second First Contact**

Ozpin took a sip from his mug and frowned down at the boy laying in the Academy's infirmary. The same boy he and Glynda had rescued two weeks ago...

To put it simply, the youth was an enigma. There were no records of him anywhere. Nor were there any records of his armor or weapons.

It was really strange. As Headmaster of one of the four most prestigious academies in Remnant Ozpin had a lot of resources on his side... And he had a lot of clues as well. Two pairs of tags hung on the boy's neck, revealing them the name, bloodtype and other information about the youth and some woman, if the name was any indication.

There were also the logos stamped on the ruined undershirt.

He never heard of an organisation called XCOM, nor of the mottos in the badges.

Vigilo Confido.

Mutare Ad Custodiam.

Both were in a dead language which hadn't been used for thousands of years. He couldn't think of anyone using it for anything nowadays.

And that was just his clothing and identification... His armor, weapons and old Scroll utilized technology which baffled their science professor.

There was no trace of Dust in them!

Right now his Science professor was holed up in Beacon's labs, tearing what little was left of his hair out, trying to understand the secrets of the rifle and pistol they recovered.

Not even Ironwood knew anything about them when he called his old friend.

And then there was the boy itself...

Christopher Redmond, as the tags named him, looked to be around seventeen or eighteen years old... A First or Second year student, if he was enrolled in one of the four Academies. Which he wasn't, as that was what Ozpin checked for first.

Other than that the boy looked pretty ordinary - short cropped black hair, brown eyes, a slightly angular face. People might even call his looks boring.

That was for the face though... His body was anything but boring.

The boy was well-developed, with noticeable muscles that spoke of regular work-outs. Metallic components stuck out of the skin of his arms and upper back, serving a function that the medics couldn't discern at the moment.

After he was patched up and healed he had gotten quite the collection of scars... But it seemed that he was used to having those. The medics had found evidence of grafted skin all over the boy's body, as well as scars from an gunshot wound in the abdomen and a stab wound in the chest. The first seemed to come from a normal round, while the second looked like it was done by a spike of some kind...

The biggest shock came when they found out that his Aura was dormant. Just what kind of person could survive against the Grimm for so long without it?

"Just who are you, young man?" Ozpin asked before taking a sip from his mug. The doctors were saying that he could wake up anytime in the next week...

The headmaster of Beacon Academy was looking forward to that.

* * *

Chris' return to consciousness wasn't a pleasant one... He felt weak and tired, and his body ached as if he just went ten rounds fist-fighting against a Berserker.

He kept his eyes shut as he tried to use the other senses to discover where he was. He could feel that he was in a bed, with warm blankets covering him. He could feel a hospital gown over his body... That, coupled with the smell of antiseptic and the telltale beating of a heart monitor told him that he was in a hospital or infirmary of some sort...

Opening his eyes he glanced around. It took him a few seconds to focus on the room at large...

He was lying on a bed in a room that was mostly white, just as he expected. The usual heart monitor, IV drip and other assorted machinery he couldn't recognize were arrayed around his bed. A look at his left gave him a nice view of the night sky through the window. And the broken moon that hung in it, dispelling any delusions that the last few days were just a dream...

"Ah, you're finally awake." Chris' head whipped to the side before he groaned in pain at the sudden movement.

"Now take it easy, young man." The old man who Chris had missed in the dark said as he closed a device that Chris had no time to get a better look at.

"Where..." He began, only to cough as his parched throat protested. The older man quickly helped Chris sit up before opening a bottle of water and pouring it in a cup. Nodding his thanks the teenager took a few sips through the straw that was dipped in it before leaning back with a sigh.

"Better?" The man asked as he sat in a chair, getting a nod in response. "Good. Now, mister Redmond, I believe you have a lot of questions..."

"Damn right I do." Chris croaked before taking another sip from the water. "How do you know my name?"

"Your tags." The man motioned towards the bedside table, where the pairs of tags were put.

"Alright, that makes sense..." Chris muttered and put the cup back on the table before leaning back in the pillow. "Second question: who are you, and where am I?"

"I can ask you the same thing, young man. But I guess I should introduce myself first. My name is Ozpin." The man introduced himself, leaning closer on his cane. Chris could see the man's silver hair, bespectacled face and green attire... Two of those traits looked familiar for some reason...

"I'm the headmaster of Beacon Academy, one of the most prestigious schools for Huntsmen and Huntresses on Remnant." Ozpin continued. "And you're currently in Beacon's medical ward."

Chris blinked. Once. Twice. Three times.

"What?" He asked in confusion. Huntsmen? Remnant? What the hell?

"Excuse me?" Ozpin raised an eyebrow.

"Okay... How about you start with something broader?" Chris asked. "For example, am I still on Earth?"

That was a good place to start... He could remember the two theories he had back when he was lucid... Time travel or different planet... And he had a suspicion on which one was true...

"Earth? You're on the ground floor..."

"No, the planet Earth." Chris corrected.

"No... You are on Remnant." Ozpin replied. He sounded patient... But Chris could also hear an undertone of puzzlement...

"Great..." Chris slumped back in the bed. He was on another planet. Earth was safe. The Moon that he saw so often wasn't shattered. There were no werewolves or mutant bats roaming the forests of America or wherever else on Earth.

Of course, that left him in a bad position... Not to mention ironic too.

Chris couldn't help but chuckle. Here he was, XCOM's youngest soldier, with over twenty extraterrestrial kills, and he was in the ironic position of being an alien himself.

"I fail to see what is so funny, mister Redmond." Ozpin said, taking a sip from a mug that was placed on a small table nearby. Chris' nostrils caught the faint scent of coffee over the standard antiseptic smell of the room.

"You'll need context." Chris waved his hand.

"Context which you'll provide?" The man raised an eyebrow as he held the mug in his hand, steam coming out of its top.

"Classified." That was all Chris said. He was sure that the man knew he wasn't from here... His armor and weapons, made with alien technology, were enough to tell that, even without the not-so-bright question from before.

"Mister Redmond..." Ozpin sighed and took another sip from the mug. "Do you realize the situation you are in?"

"Maybe, but I'm sure you'll explain it to me anyway." Chris closed his eyes, making himself comfortable. Ozpin shook his head and muttered something about today's youth being too cheeky.

"Very well, mister Redmond." The old man leaned back, making himself comfortable as well.

"You see, you currently don't exist. There are no records of anybody with the name Christopher Redmond being born in any of the Four kingdoms." Chris suppressed a smirk. Ozpin was giving him information and...

"I'm not telling you anything you wouldn't learn in a few days of wandering the streets and listening to the newscast." Ozpin said, as if reading his mind. Chris opened his eyes and shot the man a look.

"Now, as I was saying, you have no records. Of course, that doesn't prove anything, even when we take the earlier question in mind." The headmaster continued. "After all, there's always the possibility of you being born in a community outside the borders."

The look that the eyes behind the glasses shot him told Chris that Ozpin wasn't going to buy that excuse if he tried to use it... Not that he was stupid enough to do that anyway.

"Then there's the technology you had on your person." Ozpin resumed the explanation. "Every technology on Remnant, from cars to airships to weapons, are powered by a certain energy source... One that we call Dust."

Chris raised an eyebrow. The way the man said it, this Dust sounded like Elerium... Perhaps they were the same thing?

"However, upon our examination, your equipment showed no traces of Dust..."

Okay, so Dust wasn't Elerium... Both his weapons and armor contained the element in their make and power sources.

"All these facts paint a picture that is both disturbing and interesting. I have a theory, but I prefer to hear the truth from you." Ozpin leaned forward. "So mister Redmond. I will ask you: who are you and where do you come from?"

Chris still hesitated to tell him... The man was right on all accounts, and he probably knew just how far away from home he was...

"Please understand that I can help you." Ozpin continued after it became clear that Chris wasn't going to start talking. "I am one of a handful of men on Remnant who can do it, unless you turn to the criminal underworld. However, I need to know who you are."

The seconds grew into a minute. Then two. And three... Finally the man sighed in disappointment.

"Very well. The police will be here shortly to take custody of you." He said as he walked over to the door. Just as his fingers touched the handle Chris spoke:

"Wait..." He sighed. Alright, I'll tell you. But I want answers as well." Ozpin covered a smile behind a sip from his mug as he walked back to the chair.

"You will have them, mister Redmond." He said and sat down.

"So, you want to hear that I'm an alien?" Chris asked.

"And are you one?" Ozpin asked and the boy shrugged.

"Depending on what you consider an "alien". If you mean another species, then no. Unless you're not a human..." The gray-haired man shook his head.

"No. But I'd guess that you are from another planet."

"Yup." Chris nodded. "Earth... A nice little planet, covered in seventy or eighty percent water. No monsters like the infestation you have here... Well, it was like that until a couple of years ago. Then, two years ago, we were attacked by aliens..." Ozpin's eyebrows twitched slightly at that and Chris smirked.

"Yes, aliens, as in other species. Aliens who used technology far above us. Spaceships. Advanced armor that stopped conventional weaponry. Weapons that burned through the best personal armor we had at the time. They struck hard and fast, decimating army bases without breaking a sweat... They attacked cities, killing and kidnapping civilians..."

Chris closed his eyes, remembering that day... It was just a couple of months after the first attack in Germany...

"I was one of those kidnapped when the aliens attacked Seattle... I guess I got lucky, in a way. I was left alive..."

Chris' eyes stared at the wall as he remembered... The strange devices that fell from the sky, the green mist that grabbed and cocooned him, the Thin Men that carried him onboard the ship before putting him in stasis...

Ozpin stayed silent, letting the boy gather his thoughts. He had seen that look in the eyes of old soldiers and Huntsmen... He probably wore it on his face a few times as well... The look of a man who had seen more than they should...

"However..." Chris continued. "...I was saved. A multi-national organisation that opposed the aliens attacked the base where I was held." His lips curled as he remembered the soldiers that pulled him out of the stasis tank. The moment his disoriented self had understood that he was rescued he had clung to one of the men, blubbering his thanks...

"They were the Extraterrestrial Combat Unit... XCOM... Outnumbered, outgunned... But they still fought and they pulled through." In the early days of the war it hadn't been unusual for a team to get fifty percent casualties. Kevlar armor did nothing to stop the aliens' plasma weaponry, and ceramics fared only a bit better. And ordinary firearms were effective only against unarmored targets, like the Sectoids and Thin Men. Mutons could take quite a few rounds from a LMG without falling...

Things had gotten better with the creation of Carapace armor, functional Laser weapons, the MEC troopers and Gene-mods. The better equipment, coupled with the experience of the older troops increased the survival rate. The Commander even decided that the troops were ready to storm the aliens' base in Africa.

The same base that held dozens of humans that were captured and experimented upon by the aliens...

"Two weeks later the aliens replied with a counter-attack on the XCOM headquarters... There were dozens of casualties, but the soldiers and other personnel managed to repel the attack. I was still confined to the infirmary, until the XCOM medics could be certain that we weren't carrying some kind of alien plague or anything. Thankfully, only one alien managed to get in..." Chris closed his eyes and took a deep breath before continuing:

"And then we found out what they did to me..."

* * *

He was huddled behind a bed, his whole body shaking... One of the doctors was next to him, clutching a scalpel and muttering prayers to God, too silent to be properly heard above the blaring alarm.

It started half an hour ago, with an explosion that rumbled through the underground base and woke Chris up. One of the doctors panicked, another tried to calm him down, only for the first one to suddenly turn hostile and attack.

As the doctor was being subdued (read: knocked unconscious by a bedpan) the alarm blared. Panic spread quickly and some patients ran out the doors. Chris was a bit calmer and stayed there... That, or he was just too terrified to run. And then he just decided to hide...

And that led him to here and now. Waiting either for the XCOM security or soldiers to find and rescue them, or for the aliens to find and kill them.

Chris' breath hitched as he heard the doors to the medical wing open. Steeling himself the boy peeked over the bed...

And immediately froze.

There, at the door, stood what he would later discover to be a Sectoid. The alien's bulbous eyes scanned the room, the Plasma Pistol on its arm pointing around.

A whimper came from behind one of the beds and the Sectoid turned around to face in that direction. It stood still for a few seconds, its head tilted slightly before it shot at the bed. The green glob flew over the makeshift cover, burning a hole in a medicine cabinet. The woman that had whimpered now screamed as the alien sent several more rounds, all of them missing their target...

Chris would later realize that the Sectoid was toying with its victim. For now he was just staring at it, feeling helpless.

And then he felt anger... Anger at the alien, for attacking innocents. Anger at himself, for being powerless to help. Anger at the world, at God, for allowing this to happen...

He did not think... He just acted. Grabbing the first object he found, a bedpan, he stood up from behind the bed he was using as cover. With a growl he rushed the Sectoid, directing all his rage at the small alien as it turned around to shoot at him.

The horrified doctor saw the purple aura surrounding Chris' head just before the little gray man doubled over in pain, clutching at its head. A moment later the boy reached the alien and brought the bedpan down on its head, sending it on the ground.

But Chris wasn't finished... Up and down the bedpan went. The alien's yellow blood flew in the air as its Plasma pistol exploded into fragments.

Chris finally stopped when the Sectoid's head lost any semblance with its original form. The bloody bedpan clattered to the floor, the sound seeming louder in the otherwise silent room. Even the woman had stopped screaming, staring at the boy.

Panting heavily Chris stared down at the corpse of the first thing he killed. It felt... Right... Even if his parents taught him that killing was bad, that it was a sin, it felt good to kill the alien and...

Spots of red appeared on top of the alien's yellowish blood. Chris blinked a couple of times. Where were they coming from? And he felt his lip getting wet. Of all the times for his nose to start to drip...

Reaching up Chris wiped his nose. His hand came down red... For a few moments he stared at his fingers, unable to comprehend what was he seeing until it clicked.

His nose was bleeding.

The room span as the dizziness hit him before he collapsed on the floor like a puppet with its strings cut...

* * *

"And that's how I Mindfrayed my first Sectoid before pulping it with a bedpan." Chris finished with a smile that was shared by Ozpin. It did sound funny...

"After the base was cleared of hostiles we were transferred. The other rescued men and women were sent somewhere else while I was taken to the secondary base in Europe." Chris didn't know if Ozpin understood the things he was saying, but he didn't care... It felt better to just confess the life he lived in secret for the last year and a half, even if the man sitting next to the bed wasn't authorized to know that.

"Doctor Vahlen, our chief scientist, ran every test she could on me..." Chris shivered at that memory. He got everything short of dissection performed on him.

"Thankfully, she had the corpses of several Psionic aliens to cut apart. A month later she designed a way to unlock the latent Psionic potential in a human being, and a week after that we had the first Psionic soldier, and the second confirmed Psionic human in XCOM custody..." Chris smirked. "Second after me."

"Psionic?" Ozpin interrupted him with a raised eyebrow. It was clear that he wanted to ask the question for some time now, probably ever since Chris mentioned the Mindfray.

"Powers of the Mind." Chris raised his fist and concentrated. His eyes flared purple, an aura of similar color enveloping his head like a halo. Tendrils of energy snaked to his hand and he spread his fingers, a dazzling ball of purple light exploding to existence.

Chris kept the display of Psionic power for a few moments before he stopped channeling the energy. The light disappeared and everything was back to normal in an instant. The only evidence of the display was the slight throbbing in the boy's head...

"Interesting." Ozpin said, his eyebrows locked together.

"Yeah. It causes a bit of headache when used though..." He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. "Now... I think that it's time you tell me where I am before I continue."

Ozpin nodded and leaned back in the chair before clearing his throat. The man looked like he was going to be giving a lecture... Chris certainly hoped that wasn't the case.

"You are on Remnant mister Redmond. A dangerous place for Humanity... Each day we fight to survive against the Grimm. The creatures you fought yesterday."

"The werewolves?" Chris asked, to which Ozpin nodded.

"They're called Beowolves. And that's just one species of Grimm. I believe you met an Ursa as well." Ozpin remembered the Grimm's dead body that he found, with numerous wounds from the boy's knife.

"Ursa..." Chris frowned. "What was that exactly?"

"A bear-like Grimm." Ozpin explained. Chris had a vague memory of jumping on the back of something like that, stabbing it several times in the neck. He must've looked quite badass... Too bad he had lost quite a bit of blood by that point of time and was running mostly on adrenaline and some stims that were contained in the Medikit.

"There were two bat-man things as well." Chris noted.

"Draculean." Ozpin nodded.

"I see." Of course they'll be named after Dracula. Things here seemed filled with references to his Earth... "So..." Chris' voice trailed off, waiting for the man to continue.

"As I was saying, our world is full of dangers. If given the slightest chance the Grimm will destroy us. Many cities have been decimated by them... Only the natural defenses of the Four Kingdoms allow them to remain standing today." Ozpin took another sip from his mug. "That, and the Huntsmen and Huntresses."

"You mentioned those terms before..." Chris frowned. "You said that this Beacon academy is a place to train them." Ozpin nodded to both statements.

"Yes. Huntsmen and Huntresses are our first and last line of defense. These highly trained warriors go out in the wilds, risking their lives so that..."

"...the common man doesn't have to." Chris interrupted the older man, finishing the sentence for him.

"Indeed." Ozpin raised an eyebrow. "I take it you've heard this before?"

"Yeah." Chris nodded. "It was something I heard from the Commander back at XCOM."

It was part of the speech given to any new recruit. A speech that told them just what they were fighting, what were they joining, showing them the horrors of the war... It was also the last chance for them to back off, but as far as Chris knew none of them took it. XCOM selected their troops not only in terms of skill, but loyalty as well. And they were all loyal to Humanity...

"He must have been a good commander then." Ozpin said and Chris nodded again.

"So, you were saying?"

"These men use their weapons, Auras and Semblance to..."

"Hold on." Chris interrupted him again. "Aura? Semblance?"

"You truly are from another world..." Ozpin sighed before starting on a long-winded explanation about the Aura, Semblance and the abilities that they gave to a user. To Chris it sounded like Psionics and Gene Mods. Heightened perception, strength and agility, healing, different abilities...

"I was rather shocked to find out that your Aura was dormant. It only makes your survival against the Grimm more miraculous."

"Well, if it wasn't for my Gene Mods and Psionics I wouldn't have survived for so long." Chris tapped the cybernetic implants on his arm.

"You mentioned those before." Ozpin noted.

"Yes. It's short for Genetic Modification. Basically, it combines alien DNA with a human's, giving them extraordinary abilities." The man's eyes widened at that and he stared at Chris.

"Yes, you heard right. Mixing the DNA to upgrade our bodies. I got some normal stuff... Vahlen was adamant on that. She was actually reluctant to give them to me, but the Commander insisted. She wasn't happy at first... She had no idea how would the procedure affect me. Thankfully, nothing went wrong and I came out with increased strength and the ability to better track targets and react to them."

"That sounds like Aura..." Ozpin frowned and Chris nodded.

"Yeah. And Psionics are like... What was it again?"

"Semblance."

"Right. If I didn't have those, as well as the training and experience I accumulated over the last year then I wouldn't have survived in that forest." Chris concluded.

"Remarkable..." Ozpin whispered. He imagined what could happen if Chris had his Aura unlocked... Since it boosted characteristics that were already present it would have an even greater effect on him... Coupled with the abilities, weapons and training he already had... If he was trained right, taught how to kill Grimm...

Ozpin was looking at a potential legend...

"Mister Redmond... As I have told you, I'm the Headmaster here, at Beacon Academy." Chris nodded. "As such I have connections to do many things... Things that you need. I also have the authority to accept anyone I deem worthy of becoming a Huntsman or Huntress."

"Where are you going with this?" Chris leaned back against the pillow. He was starting to feel tired from having this conversation...

"You faced three different types of Grimm. You killed dozens of them. And all that without any Huntsman training, or even having your Aura unlocked."

"I still got cut up." Chris pointed out.

"Indeed, but you survived for... Two days?" Chris nodded and Ozpin continued: "Two days of near-constant running and fighting, if your condition was any indication. I doubt you had sufficient sleep either, if you saw the Draculean. I don't know if you realize it, mister Redmond, but that's not something that anybody can just do."

"I see..." Chris had a good idea of where was this going...

"I would like to extend a formal invitation to attend Beacon Academy and become a Huntsman." Yup, he called it. "We are in need of every talent we can get, and you have already proven that you have the skills needed."

Chris stayed silent. It was a good offer... This wasn't his world... But there were two factors that were the same both here and on Earth. Both planets had humans... And both planets had non-humans threatening to end humanity. Earth had the Ethereals and their thralls. Remnant had the hordes of Grimm...

"You do not need to tell me now." Ozpin said as he stood up. "The next school year starts in over a month. I can enroll you a week before that at the latest..."

"I'm in." Chris interrupted the headmaster. He joined XCOM for revenge... Revenge against the aliens that killed his family and destroyed the comfortable life he had before that... But with time the purpose changed, even if the end result was the same.

Now he fought the aliens to protect Humanity... Joining Beacon, becoming a Huntsman... It was the same thing, only with a different enemy.

"Very well." Ozpin nodded with a smile. "The Academy will take care of your tuition fee, as well as give you a stipend based on your performance."

"Alright. But I have some requests on my own." Ozpin raised an eyebrow before motioning for him to continue. "First, I want my gear back. Everything."

"Your weapons and armor are currently being examined by..."

"My weapons and armor are XCOM property."

"Mister Redmond, they can help advance our own..."

"They both use materials you don't have access to." Chris interjected. "But, if you want to know so badly I can loan my Plasma rifle. It's energy packs were spent anyway... Only, I want it back as soon as I ask for it. Okay? I'll even explain what I know about its workings. But, I want to be kept up to date on anything you discover from it."

"Very well." Ozpin nodded. The request was reasonable, and complying with it was better. He would have to convince Ironwood, but he was sure that his friend would see reason.

"Second, the stipend. I lack any knowledge about this world, apart from what I learned today. As such I may not do well with things that are common knowledge. So the stipend will be given to me based on what I have learned." Ozpin nodded again and Chris sighed in relief. Normally he wouldn't want to get any special treatment, but he was going to need it in this case.

Plus, he wanted to be able to go out and have some fun on his own... He didn't have the chance while he was at XCOM... The base in Europe had been in the middle of nowhere, and the trips outside were either to kill aliens or Exalt operatives or infiltrate an organisation that was in the way. Both of those weren't what one might consider fun when they thought about a fifteen-years old boy...

"I believe that is possible. If that would be all then I suggest you get some rest." Ozpin stood up and made his way towards the door.

"Oh, one last thing." Chris stopped him. "Can I get my phone and my keepsake back?" At Ozpin's confused look he sighed. "A rectangular device, about this big..." He mimicked the dimensions of his phone.

"Ah, your Scroll?" Chris blinked before shrugging.

"Sure, if that's what you call it here." He said before stiffling a yawn. "And the keepsake is a small smooth shard, this big..." Once again he used his hands to show just how big the piece of alien device was.

He might not be able to get it to Vahlen, but he could keep it as one of the small pieces of his world... And a reminder of the day he headbutted an Ethereal.

"Very well. Now please, have some rest, mister Redmond. You look like you need it." Chris nodded and settled down on the pillow.

"I shall see you again soon. In order to clear any details about your stay here. And I expect to hear more about your world and your life."

"Yeah... Likewise..." Chris waved at Ozpin. The older man chuckled before walking out the door, leaving the boy to sleep.

He was thinking of doing the same thing himself... He had to make a few calls in the morning, not to mention that he had his Headmaster duties on top of that.

"I guess I'll have to pull out the special blend." Ozpin sighed, looking down at his coffee mug...

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

**Aaand cut!**

**That's all for this chapter, ladies and gentlemen. Even though I'm not exactly satisfied with it... It fought me every step of the way...**

**Still, Chris has recovered, explained things, given an offer that he couldn't refuse and he took it.**

**Now, I have a question for you guys. Since Chris is becoming a Huntsman, he'll need a Huntsman-style (read: badass) attire and weapons. I have an idea for them, but I want to hear what you people think. Send me descriptions of your ideas, by PM, if possible. Or pictures, if you prefer that.**

**And that's all from me for now. I'll see you next time, where we'll have Chris' Aura unlocked, as well as other things happening.**

**Yup, other things. No, I won't tell. You didn't think I was going to spoil things for you, did you? Nope. You'll have to wait.**

**Until then read and review this story, and enjoy yourselves.**


	4. Chapter 4

**Review Replies now, A/N's at the bottom.**

**Yinko: So far his weaknesses are his inexperience and lack of close combat options. And in RWBY everybody uses that, even Lee's machineguns have those weird blades.**

**You make a good point about the materials and power cells, but I think that Dust can get around some of those issues. Though the Plasma Pistol should have some self-recharge option... After all, it doesn't need reloading in the game.**

**And as for Ozpin, it was somewhat a bluff. Chris doesn't have any ID, records, etc. How can they know he isn't some fugitive that did a half-assed job at hiding themselves from the law.**

**edboy4926 and Lupine Horror: Thank you, both for liking this story and the suggestions.**

**Also, Lupine, I love your crossovers.**

**necrofantasia: I see. I guess I'll have to take this under consideration.**

**blaiseingfire: It's a possibility.**

**drake202****: You've got it right. As for his weapons and armor, those are interesting options. They'll be considered.**

**Vandenbz****: Thank you for the ideas. I've already decided that the Ghost module will stay wrecked, since any invisibility will be too OP. And no, he won't be able to recharge his Plasma rifle like that. He lacks the technological knowledge of how to do that stuff.**

**zzxxphaser****: You're right, but Gene-Mods need Meld. And the XCOM tech needs Elerium, which is even rarer than Dust.**

**Evil Yin****: Thank you for the praise. I know how you feel, I myself only like a few harem stories and animes. As for Chris'background, most of it will be revealed during the story's progression. I can safely say now, without giving any spoilers, that Annette Durand had the role of a bigger sister in Chris' life. As for his family, they're dead. He might have some distant relatives, but things like that go to the background in his situation...**

**Your ideas are interesting, but Chris lacks the knowledge to extract the Elerium. He has a melee weapon though, the combat knife I mentioned. Also, he uses a Ghost armor, not Psi.**

**And now to the story:**

* * *

**Chapter Three: Months and a Day**

"You've been... Thunderstruck!"

Chris bobbed his head to the rhythm of AC/DC's famous song as it blared through the bud in his left ear. The boy was currently browsing through a music shop's selection. At least this world had decent music, though he still preferred Earth's music.

At least it was easy to transfer the information from his phone to a Scroll. While Chris preferred using the Earth device he had to admit that it wouldn't fit in.

Though he still kept the phone... The hacking algorithms that Chen wrote worked here as well, as he found out when he hacked one of the computers in the library. That feature would certainly be a boon if he ever needed it.

Of course, that wasn't everything that happened these past two months... Chris had actually been quite busy.

When he had woken up the day after his talk with Ozpin he had started learning everything he had to know about Remnant in order to fit in. One of the professors at Beacon, a woman by the name of Glynda Goodwitch, was helping him with that.

While she was easy on the eyes Chris thought her too strict... Not that it stopped him from looking at her. He was a teenage guy, after all. And he was sure that all male students around here were doing the same thing.

It was a week later that the doctors discharged him. A week of lessons with Goodwitch and discussions about Earth with Ozpin. The man seemed fascinated with Chris' planet and the accomplishments his Humans made without the threat of the Grimm and the influence of Dust.

Once he was out Chris had been taken to one of the training fields, where Ozpin unblocked his Aura...

* * *

Chris looked around the field. A large space was surrounded with earthen walls, with sparring rings drawn in the grass and the ground. Targets were placed on one side, for people who wanted to test their marksmanship, or so he guessed.

Ozpin was waiting for him in the middle of the field, hands resting on his cane. Chris walked up to the man, nodding in greeting.

"So, Aura... You sure this is going to work?" Chris asked him.

"Yes, I am sure. While you were still recovering I took the liberty of getting a feel of your Aura..."

"Somehow that makes me feel molested..." Chris mock-shivered, earning himself a slight glare from Ozpin. It lasted only a few seconds before he sighed and pushed his glasses up.

"I guess I could have worded that better." He said and Chris chuckled.

"Now, I have to ask. Are you ready for this?" Chris nodded without hesitation. He had been abducted, shot, stabbed, burned, augmented, had the grandmothers of all headaches a couple of times... Even if this hurt it couldn't be any worse.

"Very well." Ozpin took a step forward. "Open your mind and clear your head."

Chris took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He opened his mind, like when he was reinforcing his allies'... But it took some effort not to use his Psionics this time.

"For centuries Huntsmen and Huntresses have gone through this ritual to unlock their Aura." Ozpin said and placed his hand on Chris' shoulder. The man also closed his eyes in concentration as he pulled on his Aura. A faint glow surrounded his body, the emerald color at first pale before it intensified.

Chris could feel a push on something deep within his being as Ozpin's Aura flooded his body. For a moment there was an unconscious attempt to push back before he reigned it in, allowing the man to do his job.

"For it is in passing that we achieve immortality." Ozpin's voice echoed in Chris' mind as a faint purple glow outlined his body. "Through this, we become a paragon of virtue and glory to rise above all, infinite in distance and unbound by death." the glow intensified, becoming what XCOM had dubbed Psionic Purple. "I release your Soul, and by my shoulders protect thee."

There was a bright flash and Ozpin's eyes shot open, staggering back in surprise as Chris' Aura pushed his own back. The boy's reserves weren't great, but he compensated for that with intensity.

The Aura surrounding Chris faded and he opened his eyes. Blinking a few times he reached up and rubbed his forehead.

"Wow... I feel so much better..." He whispered amazed. Just a few minutes ago he was still feeling some of the wounds he had received in the forest. And now... Now he felt no pain, no discomfort...

"That is the wonder of Aura." Ozpin smiled, resting his hands against his cane. Thanks to his experience in unblocking other people's Auras he was feeling only a bit drained. Someone inexperienced would probably be mistaken for having just finished a marathon.

"Now, let's test how your Aura interacts with your Psionics and Genetic Modifications..."

* * *

What followed was one of the most intensive Psionic tests that Chris ever had. He Mindfrayed some of Professor Port's captured Grimm, he demonstrated his ability to influence somebody's mind by causing a Boarbatusk to cower in fear before strengthening the minds of Ozpin and Oobleck.

He even showed his weak Telekinetic Field, deflecting Goodwitch's attacks.

And the best of all? No headaches.

Well, not exactly. He got them for a couple of seconds, before his Aura healed them. He only wished that he and the other Psionics had this ability back on Earth... It would have made things so much easier.

And there were the other benefits of Aura to consider. With his Gene Mods he could punch much harder than anyone else who had his build. Now... Now he was able to shatter weaker trees with a punch. And a jump straight up got him to the fifth floor with ease, where before he was only able to reach the second or third. And his eyes were able to track objects at much higher speeds than before.

All in all everything went well. Chris still didn't know what his Semblance was, but Ozpin reassured him that it would come in time.

That was for his Aura. Then there was the issue with his equipment and the General who wanted it...

* * *

"Jesus Christ!" Chris exclaimed as he saw what happened to his armor.

The pieces of the Ghost armor were laid on two tables in Beacon's armory. On the left were the hard pieces, which looked better. Only slightly dented and scratched after his ordeal in the forest, along with the partially melted shoulder pauldron.

All in all, nothing new. The Carapace armor that Chris wore in his first mission was much worse when he got back to HQ...

Ozpin raised an eyebrow as the boy shivered and rubbed at his chest, where the scar from a stab wound was. He had inquired about it and the answer he got was troubling.

It was the soft undersuit that had Chris exclaim like that. The Kevlar-like fabric was placed on a table to the right of the hard armor.

And it looked like a rag.

The dark fabric was torn in more places than Chris could remember being wounded. It was also soaked in his blood. If this was XCOM it would have already been scrapped, anything useful extracted from it and the rest thrown out.

His weapons lay on another table. Both the Rifle and Pistol had their Gas canisters and Energy cells extracted and placed next to them. His knife was also there, looking ordinary even if Chris knew that it was made of metals that didn't exist on Earth.

His Grappling hook was also placed with his weapons, for some reason that Chris didn't try to figure out at the moment.

"As you can see, mister Redmond, your weapons and armor are left mostly untouched. As I informed you, we have examined them while you were recovering."

Chris nodded to Ozpin as he walked over to the table with the weapons. A quick check of the power cells' indicators had him frown... The rifle had only one full cell and one at 30%. The other five were empty, their indicators dark.

Putting the cells down he looked over the rifle. The piece of reverse-engineered alien tech was scratched, and it had a small dent on the side, probably from when it fell from that cliff. Chris wasn't worried though... The rifle was quite durable, with all the alien alloys that went in its making.

Next on inspection was his pistol. The cell was showing a full charge, just as it should. Chris didn't know the exact physics behind the Plasma pistol's cell, but it could recharge by itself. Of course, that limited the damage output to that of a high-caliber assault rifle, but its usefulness more than made up for it.

With a few well-practiced moves he inserted the gas canister and power cell in the pistol before thumbing the activation switch. The familiar soft whine brought a smile to his face.

"Is everything in order?" Ozpin asked, one hand resting on top of the cane as the other held the mug of coffee.

"Yeah." Chris nodded and placed the pistol back on the table. "So, where's that General who wanted to talk with me?"

"Unfortunately General Ironwood's duties confine him to Atlas for the time being. However, he is waiting for you on a secure line." Ozpin motioned toward a mobile terminal set on a cleared workshop table.

He and Chris moved in front of the screen and Ozpin tapped a few buttons on they keyboard. It took a few moments for the call to connect. The interface was replaced by the stern face of a man with graying hair.

Ironwood's gaze made Chris instinctively straighten his back and almost salute him. The man simply had the look of a commander...

"I see you were telling the truth about your involvement with a military organisation, mister Redmond." The man said as he looked over Chris, nodding in approval.

"Yes sir." Chris replied.

"Good." Ironwood nodded again. His opinion of the boy had just jumped a few notches, something which would only make things easier.

"Now, I wanted to talk to you for several reasons. First, I wanted to see the young man who killed dozens of Beowolves."

"In all honesty, sir, the Grimm weren't as dangerous as the enemies I faced before." Sure, Chris had gotten cut up, but if he faced an equal number of aliens then he wouldn't have lasted even for a day.

"Nevertheless, it is an impressive feat for someone as young as you. You're only... What? Eighteen? Nineteen?"

"Sixteen." Chris corrected the man. There was a shocked silence for a few moments before Ironwood exclaimed:

"What?"

It dawned on Chris that Ozpin hadn't revealed his age to the General. And it was easy to mistake him for someone a couple of years older... The training and Gene Mods easily made him look like that.

"I am sixteen years old, sir." He repeated. To his credit Ironwood recovered quickly and just nodded.

"I see. A bit young to be in the armed forces, but I believe you are a special case."

"Yes sir." Chris nodded. The only reason the Commander had allowed him to join XCOM on field missions was because of his Psionics. That, and the recommendations of several soldiers, as well as Chen and, surprisingly, Vahlen.

"Very well." Ironwood continued. "Next, I wanted to speak to you about your weapons and armor, as well as your cover story."

"Cover story?" Chris blinked in surprise. Sure, he needed one, but what did it have to do with the General?

"Yes." Ozpin said from beside him. "The General has agreed to help you with your cover."

"As soon as you agree you will be the son of Amber and Vit Redmont." Ironwood continued. "A pair of Hunters from Atlas who joined the miitary to help train our troops. An year ago they have been reported killed in action when they were sent alongside the Thirty-First to take out a Grimm nest."

"Their last will asked me, a former acquaintance of theirs, to take care of you." Ozpin took the lead. "Until now you were living with friends of mine who also trained you to fight. Then I decided to test your abilities and I was impressed enough to put you an year ahead and accept you in Beacon."

"Out of curiosity... What is the actual entrance exam?" Chris asked.

"A test of your fighting ability." Ozpin replied. "One that I believe you aced when you fought in the forest. You can also enter if your records from school are good enough."

"I see." Chris nodded. "Well, I guess that works." Both Ozpin and Ironwood must have some serious influence in order to pull this off. From what he learned Hunters were a big deal in this world, and to make a couple like that wasn't a small feat.

"I'm glad to hear it. Now, to the third question..."

"My weapons." Chris interrupted Ironwood, who nodded in reply. He could see the man being a bit eager to learn more, which probably meant that he was excited.

"First of, I want your assurance that the technology will be guarded from terrorists and the like." Chris remembered the information leaks to EXALT that allowed the organisation to create their own version of Gene Mods and Laser weapons.

"I will do what I can." Ironwood promised.

"Try to do better. The technology can be devastating in the wrong hands..." Chris warned him. "Take the aliens for example."

Yeah... The Ethereals and their thralls were probably the best examples of how destructive the technology was. Three Sectoids killing the same number of Humanity's finest in the first engagement... And hundreds more were dead until the war ended...

And, of course, EXALT and other similar groups who wanted the technology for their own goals.

"Very well." Ironwood sighed. "I shall pull all the strings I can in order to keep this a secret. Is that okay with you?"

"Yes, it is." Chris nodded. "Now, I assume that you want me to tell you all I can?"

* * *

What followed were hours of Chris describing whatever details he could remember about the Plasma rifle. On a whim he decided to tell them about the Laser rifle and recommended that they start with developing those.

He also touched on his Gene Mods and MEC's, but without finding some way to replicate MELD they were just a project to be left for later.

When the conversation ended Chris himself put his Plasma rifle in the secure case to be shipped off to Atlas.

The next few days passed in a blur of training with his weapons and Aura. He still couldn't combine both, but the boost to his physical abilities allowed him to do things he never would have dreamed of.

He also had a few trips to the nearby city of Vale. The first time was quite the experience...

* * *

Chris leaned against the wall, looking over the surrounding buildings. The city of Vale was colorful, with a mix of styles that showed its different periods.

The inhabitants were just as colorful, wearing clothes that he didn't think he would see outside of an anime convention.

Chris had to will himself not to stare at a family as they passed him. They were actually dressed pretty normal... They just had a pair of rabbit ears poking from their hair.

Faunus... He had read of them, but seeing them was another thing.

"E-excuse me, sir..." Chris looked to the side. A young Faunus girl had approached him, this one sprouting a long, striped tail. She was wearing baggy clothes that were at least four sizes too big for her frame. Which, if her cheeks were any indication, was malnourished if nothing else.

"Do-do you have any change to spare?" Chris could see that she was intimidated by him... For a moment he tried to see this from her point of view. Desperately approaching someone half as tall as you, from a different species that has a history of bias against yours... He mentally applauded the girl's courage as he reached in his pocket and pulled out the stack of bills that Goodwitch had handed to him in order to buy himself clothes.

"What are you going to do with the money?" Chris asked with a smile as he crouched down, trying to look less intimidating.

"I..." She hesitated, probably thinking that this was a trick. "I'll buy some food for mama... If the shops allow me." The last sentence was said in a whisper that barely reached Chris' ears. Still, he heard it and frowned.

The blatant racism was something he couldn't tolerate much. Sure, they weren't Humans, but they were much more human than the aliens he was familiar with.

"How about we do something else instead?" He asked. The girl's eyes widened in fear and Chris raised a hand. "Nothing bad. I'll just buy the food for you so you won't have to deal with the racism and bias."

The Faunus was still hesitant, but finally she nodded. Chris smiled and stood up.

"Alright, let's go shopping..."

For the next half an hour they walked around the shopping district, Chris walking in and out of stores. The first shopkeeper had seen him talking with the Faunus girl and had refused to let him shop, but Chris didn't make that mistake twice.

Finally he walked the girl to her home in the poor district, carrying three bags of food and medicine along the way. The girl's sickly mother burst in tears when she learned of Chris' generosity. He left the house, feeling good for himself.

As a parting gift he decided to give them a bit of hope... Closing his eyes he concentrated. The purple light of his Psionics shone from under his eyelids as he felt for the mother and daughter's minds.

Their minds felt... Strange. Not entirely human... There was a certain... animalistic quality to them. Still, he could feel their emotions.

Enveloping their minds he gently pushed on them, trying to give them a bit of hope...

"I didn't expect that." Chris' eyes shot open and he whirled around, crouching a bit in a fighting stance. The boy relaxed as he saw that it was just Ozpin, with his constant mug of coffee.

"Goddamn it... You're lucky I didn't have my pistol." Chris growled.

"Indeed." Ozpin nodded and took a sip from his mug.

"What are you doing here?"

"I decided to see how were you doing. Imagine my surprise when I saw you shopping for a Faunus..."

"And why is that?" Chris frowned. The Headmaster didn't seem the racist type, but you could never know...

"I would have thought you would willingly associate with non-humans, given your background." Ozpin calmly said.

"Oh..." The boy blinked. That made sense. Chris was sure that many of his comrades in XCOM would view the Faunus as nothing more than another alien.

But he was sure that even some of them would have been sympathetic to the girl's plea.

"I couldn't turn her down... I wouldn't be able to look myself in the mirror if I did that. Besides, at that moment she was just another poor girl. Plus, I touched their minds..." Chris looked at the house. "They felt so human. Not entirely, but still..."

Ozpin nodded at that. He seemed to understand what Chris meant by that...

"Today you discovered something that many of us fail to realize..." The man said and took another sip from his coffee.

"That the Faunus are just like us?" Chris asked, but Ozpin shook his head.

"No... The Faunus are their own people... Similar to us, but not the same. But they deserve to be treated with the same kindness."

Chris stared silently at the house before nodding in agreement.

"Yes, they do..."

* * *

That was his first visit to Vale, but not the last. And today he was there again.

Goodwitch had told him that she had to go to the city and that she was taking him to get his school supplies.

After putting on a purple sleeveless shirt and a pair of jeans he had slid the Plasma Pistol in the back of his waistband and thrown the shirt over it, much to Goodwitch's disapproval. Still, she hadn't told him to leave it behind.

Shopping for the supplies had taken them just a couple of hours. After that the blonde-haired woman had left him to wander on his own while she went to do... Well, something. Chris hadn't asked.

That was just a few hours ago. He expected her to call him any moment now. And in the meantime he was looking over the guitars that the shop sold. Perhaps he could save money and buy one... His father was trying to teach him how to play before the kidnapping and...

Wait...

Those were gunshots!

Chris quickly stopped the music from his Scroll as he darted out of the shop. The gunshots seemed to come from around the corner. He dashed over to it and peeked around...

Chris blinked at the scene in front of him. A girl that looked like she was going to play the role of Little Red Riding Hood in a school play was fighting a bunch of men that looked like this world's version of Chicago gangsters.

And she was doing that with a scythe bigger than her! No, a scythe that incorporporated a firearm with quite the kick, Chris corrected himself as the girl fired a bullet at the ground, using the recoil to propel herself up in the air to avoid a flare that a man dressed in white shot at her.

He had to admit, the girl was good. But several of the the gangsters had gotten up and drawn their firearms, firing bursts of bullets at her while their boss fled the scene. Sooner or later they'd land a shot.

And that was something that Chris couldn't allow.

The boy dashed forward, the gunfire drowning out the sound of his boots. Within seconds he was behind the first gangster and he clasped his fists, bringing his hands up before delivering a solid blow to the back of the man's head.

A gangster noticed his comrade collapse like a sack of bricks and turned around, trying to fire at Chris. The boy kicked the man's rifle off his hands before delivering a roundhouse kick to his jaw, sending him down on the asphalt. The man wasn't knocked out, but judging by the way he was trying to crawl up he was out for the fight.

Chris delivered another kick to the man's head, just to be sure before he felt his Aura drain as bullets smashed against it. He silently thanked Ozpin for unlocking it even as he dove behind a trash can. It was a flimsy and low cover, but it was better than no cover.

The men clearly lacked firing discipline as they ran out of bullets almost at the same time. That was all the chance he needed... As they struggled to reload Chris popped out from behind his cover, Plasma pistol in hand.

The man on the left cried out in pain as the green projectile hit him in the chest. As Chris had found out in testing, Aura passively blocked only the kinetic damage. The heat still bled through, unless actively blocked.

There was the sharp crack of a rifle and the second man dropped. Chris nodded his thanks to the small girl as he stood up.

"Where did that man go?" She asked him as he walked up to her.

"Up there." Chris pointed towards where he saw the man climb up a ladder.

"Let's go!" The girl didn't even wait for an answer as she shot in that direction. Chris paused only to kick the man he shot earlier in the head before dashing after her.

The girl demonstrated a casual disregard for the laws of Physics as she leaped in the air, using the recoil from her rifle to propel herself up the rest of the way. Chris shook his head as he put the pistol in the waistband of his pants before jumping up and grabbing the ladder a little below the fourth floor. Then he continued climbing the rest of the way.

Chris' head popped over the top just in time to see the man standing on the side door of a dropship, pointing his walking stick at the girl.

There was a whistle as the man shot a flare at her. Chris didn't think, he reacted. Putting everything he had in his legs he dashed forward, pushing the girl out of the way as his eyes flared purple.

A purple Psionic field exploded from him just as the flare impacted a Dust crystal. The man looked like he was about to laugh before he noticed the firestorm that swirled around Chris' Telekinetic Field.

With a growl Chris tried to direct the flames at the dropship. He partially succeeded, the primal energy washing over the canopy. Pity... He was aiming at the guy who was gaping in surprise.

Oh well, he guessed that the Plasma pistol would have to do. Pulling the pistol out from his waistband he pointed it at the man and pulled the trigger twice. Two bolts of green plasma shot out, both missing the man as he was pulled in the cockpit. Chris clicked his tongue.

"Shot failed to connect." He muttered as he lowered his pistol. The girl looked at him strangely, but Chris ignored her. His attention was focused on the red-clad woman who took the other man's place.

For a brief moment he tried to pierce the shadows that hid her face. Then she raised her hand palm pointing at him as her dress lit up like a Christmas tree.

Chris' eyes widened in surprise and he jumped to the side as a fireball shot right through the space his head occupied. Several more followed, each one blowing chunks off the concrete rooftop as he moved to take cover behind an air-conditioner unit.

A series of whirrs and clicks drew Chris' attention to the girl he was helping. For a moment he stared at the thing she was holding before she started shooting.

"No common sense..." The boy muttered as he popped out of cover to add to the firepower directed at the dropship. The woman seemed to be blocking the girl's shots with an Aura-enhanced hand, and she didn't even flinch when she raised the other to block the green plasma.

"This isn't working!" The girl stated the obvious as she reloaded the strange rifle's clip. Chris didn't reply at first, his eyes looking over the woman and the dropship as he tried to think of a plan.

Interestingly, the girl beat him to it.

"Aim for the head!" She commanded and Chris glanced at her. "I've got a plan."

Well, he could trust her... Hopefully. And pouring more fire at the woman wouldn't be bad. Shifting his aim to her head Chris squeezed the trigger. The bolts of Plasma were once again intercepted by a raised hand, just as he expected.

And then the girl fired. The round hit the woman's leg, the impact causing her to stumble. Chris followed with a few more shots from his pistol, adding to her momentum.

He didn't manage to push her off the dropship though... The pilot was good enough to keep it under her feet. What he did manage though was to send a stray shot inside the craft, hitting the ceiling of the passengers' compartment.

While the outside of a Bullhead transport was heavily armored, the inside wasn't. A necessary drawback to decrease production costs and overall weight.

As it happened, the plasma bolt melted through the thin metal with ease. The same thin metal that housed wires, tubes and other things that connected the cockpit with the engines.

Chris didn't know what exactly did he hit, but the spray of fire that engulfed the woman was a welcome outcome. The lack of a scream was a bit disappointing, but then again, it could've been drowned by the sound of the right engine exploding.

The dropship started spinning through the air as the pilot tried to wrestle some control out of it. Chris watched as the craft span to the side before it rammed through a building and gorged a good part of the street.

"Good call, Lil' Red." Chris addressed the girl, who frowned at him.

"My name isn't Red!" She pouted. "It's Ruby."

"Chris." He simply replied. "Now, I think that we should get to the crash site and eli-..." His voice trailed off and he shook his head. He was just about to say "eliminate the survivors", as if this was another downed UFO...

"Yes! We have to arrest them and... Umm... Give them to the police?" Ruby looked at Chris and he nodded.

"Yes, and for the record, it's hand them." He corrected her before sliding down the ladder with practiced ease. The girl just jumped after him, unfolding her scythe and stabbing it in the side of the building to slow her descent.

The two dashed to the crashed VTOL, their weapons at the ready. However, the wreck was empty...

"Damn it!" Chris cursed as the police cars screeched to a halt behind him...

* * *

"Well, mister Redmond, your story matches the one of your accomplice." Chris let out a groan and slumped against the table.

"Did you have to word it like I was some sort of a criminal?" He asked the detective. For the past few hours he had been interrogated in a small, concrete room with a one-way mirror on one wall. Its furnishing consisted of two chairs and a table and it was lit by a low-hanging overhead lamp...

You know, the classic.

"Your stunt caused thousands of Lien in property damage. You're lucky that there were no deaths." The detective frowned at him.

"Hey, I was trying to stop them from killing the girl!" Chris tried to defend himself.

"And that's why we're letting you go with a warning." The man replied as he stood up from the chair. "Enjoy your night, mister Redmond."

"Wait." Chris called out after him as he stood up as well. "Can I at least know who I was shooting at?"

"Well... I guess there's no harm. It'll be all over the news anyway." The detective turned around to face the boy and pulled out his Scroll.

"His name is Roman Torchwick, a criminal with a file thicker than my arm." He gave him the Scroll and Chris stared at the image that was called up. A standard pair of mugshot, showing his face and profile stared back at him.

"I see. And his accomplice?" He asked as he returned the Scroll.

"Unknown. The details you gave me weren't enough to recognize her." The man pocketed the Scroll before opening the door. "Come on, your Guardian is waiting for you."

"What about my weapon?" Chris asked.

"It has been released in my custody, mister Redmond." Ozpin said from the side of the door. The man was once again dressed as usual, with the ever-present mug of coffee in his hand.

"Hey Oz." Chris greeted the older man. The detective nodded to the Hunter before he retreated, muttering something about paperwork.

"Come, mister Redmond." Ozpin waived him in another room. Chris was slightly surprised to see that it was the room behind the one-way mirror, a place he never saw in real life before.

Strangely enough, there was a plate of cookies on the small table that was set in the room.

A look through the glass revealed that it wasn't his interrogation room on the other side, but another one that contained the girl he helped and an irrate Glynda Goodwitch who was chewing her out...

"You two caused a lot of destruction." Ozpin noted as he observed the two.

"Standard XCOM procedure." Chris shrugged as he grabbed a cookie from the tray. Killing the x-rays was higher on the priority list than collateral damage. "And that was minor compared to what we've done before."

The current top spot for destruction was held by a Japanese pilot who downed a Battleship on top of one of their cities.

Several XCOM squads did try to top him off by using a liberal amount of rockets and grenades, but they never came close...

"Indeed." Ozpin took a sip from his mug. "I shall take that under consideration the next time you're sent in an urban setting."

"Hey, this is just the first time. And I wasn't a Heavy on rampage or anything." Chris defended himself.

"Nevertheless, your record speaks for itself." Ozpin countered and Chris sighed. This was his first urban combat in Remnant, and he did ruin a few buildings...

"Well, that wouldn't have happened if Goodwitch had come when she told me she would." Chris defended himself. "And where was she anyway?" He asked with a frown. "She was supposed to call me hours ago."

"She was..." Ozpin paused for a moment, wondering if he should tell the boy the truth. Then he decided that it wasn't worth the pain that would follow. "Busy. She was busy."

"I see..." Chris frowned and looked at the interrogation room. "So, what about Lil' Red?" He asked, trying to change the topic. "I'm sure that you dug out any info you could find on her..."

"I didn't have to." Ozpin replied and Chris raised an eyebrow.

"Her name is Ruby Rose. Daughter of two good friends of mine and the niece of another one." He continued.

"Ah, I see. I guess that your friends are Hunters as well?" Ozpin nodded and took another sip from his mug.

"I guess that makes sense... Only a Hunter would allow a girl like her to wield a gunscythe." Chris noted.

"High-Caliber Sniper Scythe." Ozpin corrected him. Chris blinked a few times as he tried to process the words.

"Does unlocking people's Aura erase their common sense or something?" He asked. This made only a bit more sense than Oobleck's weapon!

"You are the one with the newly-unlocked Aura. You tell me." Ozpin countered and Chris rolled his eyes.

"Point..." He conceded before turning his attention back to the room beyond the glass. "What are you going to do with her?"

"I'm going to talk to her." Ozpin replied as he took the plate of cookies. "And maybe bend some rules..."

"If she acceps the offer she can't refuse?" Chris asked and Ozpin raised an eyebrow. "Right... Remind me to tell you about The Godfather later." The older man nodded and left, but ot before Chris had the chance to steal a cookie from the tray.

Turning his attention back to the room he took a bite from the cookie as he observed the headmaster's conversation.

He had to admit, the man was a good actor. Pretending that he didn't know anything about Ruby.

The girl herself was getting quite excited... The complete opposite of Goodwitch, as Chris noted when he glanced at her.

The offer was much less official than the one given to him... But then again, the circumstances were different, not to mention the people they were given to.

Still, the girl looked like that made her day. Or week. Or probably the following years, if the smile was any indication...

"Well, this will be an interesting year." Chris muttered to himself before walking out of the room. Ozpin, Goodwitch and Ruby were wrapping things up, so he was going to wait for them in the hall.

"I guess congratulations are in order for Lil' Red, eh?" He asked the headmaster as he and Glynda walked out.

"Indeed. With her the teams are now even." Ozpin replied, checking something on his Scroll.

"Well, I guess it's time to call it a day, eh!" Chris asked and Ozpin nodded before moving along. The boy made to follow him, but a hand on his shoulder had him freeze.

"I still have to talk with you, mister Redmond..." Glynda Goodwitch's voice sent shivers down his spine, and not the pleasant kind...

* * *

**Author's note:**

**Finally found the time to finish this chapter... As you can see, I detailed a timeskip and given you some info. Chris also met the first character from the main cast, and the first effect of his appearance in the world of Remnant gets known. So far it's only a small deviation from canon and things will continue like that until a certain point in time.**

**Now, to address something. After talking with one of my reviewers, as well as doing some thinking, I decided to inform you that the pairings I mentioned won't be my final say. They may change, they may stay. I'm not sure, we'll see how will things develop.**

**I also want to thank all of you who gave me ideas for Chris' Hunter attire and weapons. I won't be able to use everything, but your ideas will definitely get a mention when I reach the point of presenting his weapon(s).**

**Next chapter will have the trip to Beacon, as well as the first night there.**

**Until then: read, review, follow, favorite and most importantly, enjoy.**


	5. AN

Unfortunately, this isn't the update you've been waiting for all this time. This is just an AN to inform you of a few things.

I'm going to make a rewrite of this and my other XCOM fanfiction, making some minor and maybe a few more major changes. What's probably the most important one is that I'll be adding elements I've read about from the Long War mod, though it won't be everything...

For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, the Long War changes and adds many features to XCOM:EU and EW, making the game more difficult and longer, but much more fun as well.

But the rewrite/upgrade's going to take a while. I need to get a few things in my life in order first... Whoever said that "Growing old is mandatory, growing up is entirely optional" was either too lucky or stupid...

While you wait for me to write and post the new chapters/updates, you can check my One-shots, Omakes and Drabbles where I'll be posting story ideas and omakes to my existing stories... When I write them, of course.. The story ID is 10815575.


	6. REWRITE

**Ladies and gentlemen, the first chapter of this story's rewrite is finally done. The story ID is 11188539. Hopefully it'll be as liked as this story.**


End file.
